Craters on Enceladus tend to be modified by a couple of different
processes that are visible in this view.
Most crater rims on this icy surface appear to have softened, or
"relaxed," shapes compared to the initial, sharp edges they likely
possessed when first formed by impacts. Additionally, systems of tectonic
folds and fractures cut through craters, like those at top center,
repaving the more ancient, cratered surface.
One of the largest of these systems is Samarkand Sulci, which stretches
from lower right toward upper left in this view.
The view looks toward terrain near the north pole of Enceladus (504
kilometers, or 313 miles across) from 48 degrees above the moon's equator.
Lit terrain seen here is on the moon's Saturn-facing side. North is up and
rotated 16 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
June 30, 2008 using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to
wavelengths of polarized green light centered at 617 and 568 nanometers.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 161,000 kilometers
(100,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or
phase, angle of 85 degrees. Image scale is 962 meters (0.6 mile) per
pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
